PROVIDENCE — A Brown University committee’s first report about the protest that canceled an October lecture by then-New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has found that “complex circumstances”...

By MICHAEL P. McKINNEY

PROVIDENCE — A Brown University committee’s first report about the protest that canceled an October lecture by then-New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has found that “complex circumstances” led to the protest and there “are many lessons to be learned from the episode.”

Protesters concerned over the New York Police Department’s “stop-and-frisk policies” under Kelly picketed outside before the event, greeted Kelly with boos and interrupted the Oct. 29 speech at the List Arts Center on campus until university officials canceled it, with Kelly leaving the stage to shouts of “racism.”

Fear by some administrators that tension in the room would “escalate to violence” was cited as one of the main reasons for canceling the speech, according to the report.

University President Christina Paxson convened the committee of five faculty members, two undergraduates and one graduate student in November to examine events surrounding the lecture.

The report, sent to the university community by email on Wednesday, is phase one, while future recommendations are expected.

The report states that students indicated their actions at the lecture came about due to a number of factors, including administrators’ responses to them.

“One student stated that a community member was touched and told, ‘You need to sit down,’ which ‘enraged a lot of people,’” according to the report. And “students took note of the uniformed police presence at the front of the hall, which prompted some anxiety.”

Concerns arose more than a week before the speech. Hundreds of students, alumni and community members signed a petition protesting Kelly’s appearance. On Oct. 28, several university officials met and decided against canceling the lecture.

Prof. Marion Orr, director of the university’s Taubman Center, told the committee examining what happened that the selection for the Krieger Memorial Lecture adhered to typical procedure: a list of potential speakers is circulated among Taubman Center faculty, staff and students. The lecture was established by the parents of Brown graduate Noah Krieger after his death.

“On this occasion, in an effort to represent different viewpoints and spark discussion, the Krieger family suggested inviting Raymond Kelly, who had been serving as New York City’s police commissioner since 2002 (and had previously held the post from 1992-1994),” the committee’s report states. “Commissioner Kelly’s name was not included in the master list of potential speakers that was circulated.”

Kelly’s team later provided a title, “Proactive Policing in American’s Biggest City,” and said that Kelly would, according to the committee report, “speak about his eleven-year tenure as the head of the New York City Police Department, and the strategies that have enabled the NYPD to drive down crime by more than 30 percent since 2001 while defending the city from terrorist attacks.”

On Oct. 17, the report says, a Brown alumnus expressed concerns in an email to Orr about Kelly being chosen, citing what the email called the “targeting of Arab and Muslim people …” and “unprecedented levels of constitutional violations of New Yorkers, particularly young Black men, through his stop and frisk policies.” The email asked “if there will be any opposing points of view offered to balance,” according to the report. Orr responded that Kelly’s talk would be open to the public and that a question-and-answer session would follow.

“The Taubman Center decided to ask the commissioner if he would be willing to meet with a concerned core of students after his lecture, and inform the students of his response,” the report says. But Kelly’s schedule did not provide time for a separate meeting with students.

When a student protest organizer arrived at the meeting, with the petition now signed by 500 people, a university vice president indicated an offer to sponsor another event later in the year for different views on stop and frisk. The student said the group of students would probably go ahead with their protest.

The report quashes one campus rumor, saying there was no honorarium, travel expenses or other compensation for Kelly.

Kelly left the List Arts Center by a side door after university officials gave up attempts to continue and closed the program.

In August 2013, a federal judge ruled that the stop-and-frisk policies were unconstitutional.

On Twitter: @mikemckwrite

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